


Nine-Tenths of the Law

by dorothy_notgale



Series: The More Loving One (Beyond Beyond Re-Animator) [1]
Category: Bride of Re-Animator (1989), Re-Animator (1985)
Genre: M/M, Pet Names, Porn, Unsafe Sex, sad sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 04:08:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4946122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan can't stay away from Herbert, no matter how much he wants to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nine-Tenths of the Law

_Summer 1987_

Dan shambles blearily down the hall of their latest ill-appointed rental property (with basement, of course). He bypasses his own bedroom, making instead for the door at the end of the corridor. It's open as always.

Inviting.

“Thought he rented a private room,” he mutters to himself, the joke so old and worn that it's not even funny.

When he enters, Herbert is sitting up shirtless in bed, carefully annotating an antique book that probably used to be worth something before he got his hands on it. He's good at that—ruining the value of things.

At the creak of the floorboard, he peers over the tops of his glasses and blinks slowly. He doesn't have to change expression or utter a sound to cause Dan an acute, humiliating awareness of his own disheveled state.

“Can I help you?”

“I'll just—never mind.” Dan steps back, ready to exit and pass out in his own room from embarrassment and alcohol.

“You disturbed me in bed just to turn around and leave? How _surprising_.” The sheer levels of arch bitchiness in his roommate's tone deserve a scientific study all their own.

“What's that supposed to mean?” The whine in his own voice, though, is unfortunately common.

“Oh, nothing. Carry on.” The sheet falls from Herbert's left leg as he brings it up to use the thigh as a writing surface. “You always do.”

Dan's mouth is dry. He should drink some water and bed down to fend off dehydration and the morning's hangover.

Herbert looks so cool, though, so clean and crisp, barely covered by virgin-white sheets. The filth hidden inside means he's the farthest possible thing from pure, but God, this illusion is what Dan wants to quench his thirst.

Graphite scratches over century-old text as he approaches. Being ostentatiously ignored is nothing new; it's a game Herbert plays when annoyed for whatever reason. But before they went to war, Herbert slept (when he slept) on a twin-size mattress. When they came back he bought a queen, and he's never yet objected to using it for its secondary purpose.

Dan kicks his shoes off by the footboard and crawls up the springy surface on hands and knees. Herbert licks his pencil, pink cat-tongue darting out; when he turns a page, the paper rattles in the too-quiet room.

He is all stark black and white when clothed, lips the only softening touch of color. Dan doubts that anyone else on Earth knows what Herbert looks like nude, with all the delicate pink accents to his form revealed. Nipples, tongue, cock, knees, the soles of his feet—even his cheeks take on a faint rosy tint when he's excited.

Which he is, now. His glasses can't hide that telltale flush.

There's something intoxicating about being able to turn on a creature so coldly logical, so utterly divorced from human desires, especially when it takes so little effort. The hangover from this will be more than worth it, Dan thinks, running a fingertip ticklishly along Herbert's right arm.

It twitches; he hopes that the notes are shaky, documentary evidence of The Great and Terrible Dr. West's distraction to baffle future historians.

His own contributions will be a mere footnote, after all.

Herbert's eyes continue across the page, but he doesn't seem to be making much sense of it as Dan strokes a hand slowly up the exposed leg, starting at ankle and heading for the crest of knee. The hairs feel crisp and springy when pushed backwards. His calf is firm, developed by workdays pacing hospital corridors followed by The Work done on foot all through the night.

Dan kisses the knee, just for fun, before plucking the book from unresisting hands. He sticks the pencil in as a bookmark and tosses it to the floor—no sense crying over maintenance if the damage is already done.

Herbert looks back, nearly expressionless, but Dan knows his keeper wants this, or will at least allow it. Knows that the liberties he's just been permitted to take are ones no one else would survive.

So he doesn't mind when that bubblegum mouth smiles, just slightly, and says in gentle mockery, “Is someone feeling neglected, Precious?”

“It's been a while.” _Three months._

“Hmm. So it has; I'd begun to think Miss Archer was demanding fidelity of you.”

Dan frowns and pushes away thoughts of the perfectly nice woman he was supposed to see tonight. He'd get closer, drown himself in the man whose bed he can't avoid, but that leg remains bent to bar the way.

After a moment of silence, Herbert reaches out, tipping his chin up with deceptively kind fingers. “I don't mind, Daniel. Whatever it is you're here for, I take good care of my possessions.” His other hand strokes Dan's forelock back, out of his eyes, so that he cannot avoid that paralyzing gaze. “And whether or not I approve of your dalliances, rest assured: you are _always_ mine.”

The leg drops elegantly, and he is drawn in for a voluptuous kiss. When they break, he is whimpering and Herbert's nose is wrinkled in displeasure.

“You taste like a distillery, Daniel.”

He hadn't been thinking clearly enough to brush his teeth or pop a mint. If he had, he wouldn't be here right now.

“Do you mind?”

“Not overly. I just wasn't expecting it. You didn't drive home from that dive, did you?”

“Of course not. I took a cab.”

“Good, Danny. I'm glad you took care of yourself.” A sick little jab of pleasure hits his gut at the praise, the concern. It's almost better than the hands carefully unbuttoning his shirt and jeans. “I wouldn't want to lose you.”

Dan shivers when those hands steal inside his clothing. They are never warm—no matter the environment, Herbert's skin just doesn't radiate heat. He absorbs it. Dan's skin pebbles in the wake of each touch, nipples hardening from both cold and arousal, and he grinds his pelvis down.

Herbert, for all his composure, rises rampant beneath the sheet. The proof of want is undeniable. To his credit, he doesn't try; instead, he slides one hand down to squeeze Dan's ass and guide him into better alignment.

In retrospect, Dan never should have taught him to kiss. Being the one in control was such a novel experience that he overindulged, insisting they keep working at it long after Herbert became skilled. Now the student's mouth moves with a tender ferocity scientifically calibrated and artistically balanced to please only one person to the finest of degrees. It's a weapon Dan willingly handed over, more fool he.

But, God, when Herbert's like this, blood glowing in his face, lips wet and swollen even further than their everyday pout, he's irresistible. Like a newly-fed vampire still hunting for the fun of it, or a real human being enjoying their body. Anything but the chilly porcelain doll he actually is.

Soft, such soft skin over ribs over organs over a pit where the soul should be. It tastes like sin and bruises beautifully, carrying bite marks for weeks.

He wants to put his mouth on Herbert; he wants to choke on that pretty pink dick and let it use him. When he moves downward, though, Herbert tugs his hair.

“Not tonight, I think, dear heart.” Endearments fall from his lips like toads from the wicked sister's in a fairytale. “Now that you've got my attention, I have something else in mind.” The grope in emphasis feels both amazing and grossly unnecessary.

Dan allows himself to be stripped, lets Herbert poke and pose his limbs into an easily-accessible sprawl. Brutal though he often is in his work, Herbert takes preparation seriously in the bedroom, and sets to stretching and lubing with medical efficiency.

If only he were rough or careless, Dan might be able to walk away. But instead, he writhes and moans in abjection as Herbert's fingers play him like an instrument.

His eyes fly open when he feels a wet cavern close around his member. The gaze that meets his is hot with triumph even as its owner tortures him. The fact that Herbert can remain so masterful, so in control, while sucking cock and fingering him in the nude makes it worse and better. The thought of what's to come makes it unbearable, and he nearly loses his mind seconds before Herbert pulls off. As it is, he's left teetering and unfulfilled.

“Up, Daniel.” Herbert sits back against the headboard, erection proudly exposed (how could it be otherwise? Pride is foremost among his sins, after all), and motions as perfunctorily as to a sub-par waiter. “I want to see you.”

If Dan weren't this hot for it, he'd refuse—insist on being facedown in pillows, maybe, or flat on his back. But he _is_ this hot, and he can't refuse, and he's astride before he knows it.

Three months without this hurt. Not physically; Herbert's care guarantees it's all pleasure, the bastard. The time without hurt like a missing flavor, a broken stained-glass window, an empty bedroom. It hurt like checking the mailbox and knowing it would contain bills instead of letters from home.

It hurt because of the too-small uncrossable gulf between what might be and what can be.

“Oh, Daniel,” his tormentor coos, “Look at you. Just look. You're perfect, you know? Your body—keep going, Daniel. Don't slouch.” Hands on his hips correct his bashful posture, changing the angle of penetration and setting him on display. “That's better. Oh, Danny love, what I could do to you.”

He has to stop those words, those hateful beautiful words. That's why he grabs the headboard with one hand and jerks himself roughly with the other; that's why he rolls his hips and flexes his thighs. That's why he speeds up and forces that guiding grip to transform into a cling for dear life.

He doesn't close his eyes, though. He doesn't want to miss this.

It's a breathtaking sight. Sweaty, rumpled, cheeks fever-bright, eyes shining with lust, nipples peaked, the lie is too good not to buy.

His owner is cruel in the kindest way, and sometimes Dan can't help but want to be possessed in body if not soul.

Their eyes lock as he is swept away.

 

~*~*~*~*~

 

“So,” Herbert says, nestling close and laying his head on Dan's chest. “Three months.”

“What?” Herbert, distractable, work-focused Herbert, tracking the time—this throws Dan off-guard. If he were smart, it would do the opposite.

“I was… curious as to how long you'd wait to approach me, given no advances on my part.” So the small sweetness of the moment turns sour. He's an experiment. “It's been so long, I'd begun to think you wouldn't—”

“I broke up with Nancy,” he interrupts.

“Ah. I see.” Herbert stares, something indecipherable moving behind his doll eyes. “So it was the lack of access to other options, not any innate interest. Pity.” He rolls onto his side and fishes his book up from the floor. “It's spoiled now—I won't be able to replicate the conditions.”

The spine cracks in two around the pencil. At least it saved his place, Dan thinks.

 


End file.
